Http v https

[digitalarts]

We have an ecommerce site retailing relatively high value products - precious metals - We have a VeriSign SSL certificate for the domain...  Weighing up the advantages of pointing all visitors through https on the domain, there is a benefit of customer confidence, but from a search engine - say Google's point of view, will delivering the site over https have any trust factor or benefits?

[Tom-Anthony]

Google doesn't mind which you use. However, you should make sure that each page is viewable via only one of the protocols and 301 redirects to the other if accessed via the 'incorrect' one. It can be a mixture of both, so you could use http for browsing the site, then switch to https when the user beings the checkout process.

I normally advocate http until the checkout process begins, unless there is a reason to do it differently.

[JaneCopland]

Hi Paul,

I'm really not a fan of providing entire sites in HTTPS and really recommend only using secure URLs on pages through which sensitive information is passed. As Tom says, ensure that every URL is only allowed to load with either HTTP or HTTPS and that the other version 301 redirects to the canonical version. If this isn't technically possible, ensure that the canonical version of the correct URL (the one you use to link within the site, etc) is referenced in a canonical tag on the page.

[TellThemEverything]

Agree with everything said above, but will add that https does have small extra overhead, so will make your server work harder and the site slower; very minor but it's there and one reason why most reserve it's use the cart and checkout..

[scanlin]

Jane, a question: My site is served up 100% https. I have a 301 redirect on every http request that redirects the user to the https version. Do I still need to use the canonical tag anywhere? For example, if the user enters 'http://www.domain.com' then they are 301'd to 'https://www.domain.com' and there is no canonical tag on that page. Likewise, external links sometimes point to my site using an http version of the url and sometimes with the https version of the url. Do I need a tag somewhere to merge this link juice or will 301 redirects take care of it?

Thanks!

[Tom-Anthony]

Hi Mike,

The 301s should take care of the link juice. A rel canonical tag wouldn't do any harm if it eases your mind though.

Is there a reason you are serving the whole thing https? If not, as Jane, James and I all agree on - it is probably best to only use https where necessary.